Carmen Policy still living the high life in S.F.

Published 4:00 am, Sunday, May 15, 2011

"He likes to remind me of that every time I see him," said Policy, chuckling during a conversation this week. "He never lets me forget it."

That the onetime 49ers executive has made San Francisco his home - despite his Ohio roots - is no surprise. The city overflows with the fine wine and finer dining that Policy loves. And after all the success he and Eddie DeBartolo had with the team, Policy is entrenched in city society.

"It's great," said Policy. "Willie Brown lives right up the street. And so does John Madden. Joe's right upstairs. I love it."

What is there not to love? "I don't have many bad days," he said.

Unless of course you count the days he spends trying to get a new football stadium built in San Francisco.

In fact, Policy has spent the past few years doing battle with the team he once worked for.

DeBartolo's nephew, Jed York, who now runs the Niners, wants to build the team's new stadium in Santa Clara, in the parking lot adjacent to its headquarters. Policy is consulting for Lennar Corp., the construction firm that wants to build a stadium in San Francisco's Hunters Point neighborhood.

All signs point south, with the team adamant about leaving San Francisco behind, but I wouldn't count out Lennar. Or Policy. The longtime political operator makes a compelling case for why the stadium could still get built in San Francisco, the 49ers' home since 1946.

"You have a league that has no plan in place to support the building of new stadiums," said Policy, referring to the NFL's lack of a financing arm. "You can't finance that deal in Santa Clara. I'm not sure you can in San Francisco, either.

"But the prospects are brighter in San Francisco."

I'll split the difference with Mr. Policy and say this:

-- The 49ers shouldn't leave San Francisco. It's the town that embraced them from Day 1. Santa Clara is not right down the road. It's a different city. And the Niners are the franchise that made San Francisco a big-league sports town.

-- I'm not sure Hunters Point is the best place for the stadium, either. San Francisco needs to develop its eastern shoreline, building on the success of AT&T Park and the Mission Bay complex. With the Giants talking about developing a possible NBA arena on the outskirts of the baseball stadium's parking lots, the next logical place would be down the coast near Dogpatch, or what was once known as Irish Hill. You could string together these various public venues with public parks and you'd have a fabulous new stretch of San Francisco, served by public transit with the best weather in town. Hunters Point seems a little too far away to realize that vision.

Would Lennar consider a non-Hunters Point location?

"Lennar would help," said Policy, not willing to go much further than that. Instead, he opened a whole other proposition.

"The NFL won't say it, but I believe the league has an internal belief that the only way to build a world-class stadium in the Bay Area would be a two-team stadium," said Policy.

Which means dealing with the Raiders' Al Davis, or eventually his successors. That's a tall order, but if it can work for the New York Jets and Giants, why not here?

Cal rebuttal: Last week, I wrote a column congratulating the Pac-12 on its $3 billion TV contract. And criticizing the high-stakes nature of modern college sports. The deal will increase revenues for conference members and help alleviate some of the financial problems athletic departments face up and down the coast. But it won't change the reality for players that provide free labor to a multibillion-dollar business.

As expected, the argument spurred much reaction, both in agreement and dissent. And that was the point: To get people to think about the situation.

The column also criticized UC Berkeley for the way it handled its recent financial problems, arguing that the administration should have anticipated the revenue coming from the new TV deal before cutting sports like men's gymnastics and baseball.

Not surprisingly, Cal administrators took exception to that position, arguing that they had no choice to move forward with budget cuts last September and that they had accounted for the additional monies before making their decision.

In an interview this week, Cal athletic director Sandy Barbour explained her side of things.

"As we started to look at a look-ahead model, we knew we were negotiating a contract for 2013," Barbour said. "As we started to move a little bit closer to when we had to make a decision, in the spring of 2010, the conference was reticent to give out (exact) numbers."

Instead, Cal estimated how much it would receive in additional TV monies and moved forward. "We built that number with confidence," said Barbour. "We felt that was prudent."

In the end, Cal will receive more than it estimated from the TV deal, but it's not a windfall that will make a big difference in a state that continues to wrestle with major budget problems and public education cutbacks.

Barbour told me that, in 2013, Cal expects to realize over $15 million in revenues from the new TV deal, but that's not to be confused with profit. After "what we have to pay in increased market assessment, buying out existing broadcast contracts, and paying increased costs for each campus," Cal stands to net an additional $5.2 million, Barbour said.

That helps, but won't fix the larger shortfall Cal's programs face. Private donations, like those that helped save men's gymnastics and baseball, look to be a standard part of the budget equation going forward.

"Certainly the response has been unprecedented," said Barbour. "We're thrilled with it. It's a great testimony to our community."

Belt's blog: In case you want to stay in touch with demoted Giants rookie Brandon Belt, you can follow his season on a blog he's co-authoring with veteran infielder Mark DeRosa. Called "The Veteran and the Rook," on MLBlogs.com, young Belt recently wrote about how tough it is on family when you're living the baseball life.

"While I'm in Colorado Springs, (my wife) Haylee is in San Francisco picking up the rest of our stuff from the apartment we were renting. We had to scramble for an apartment in Fresno and found one we could share with another player on the Grizzlies. ... But a couple days ago, someone broke into the car belonging to the wife of another player, who lives a floor below us.

"So I don't feel comfortable with Haylee staying there when I'm out of town. That's the part of baseball you don't hear about much. It's not a huge deal, and believe me I'm not complaining, but packing up and moving, then packing up and moving again, can be rough on spouses."

Hang in there, Brandon. Something tells me you'll be back in San Francisco soon enough.

Al Saracevic is The Chronicle's sports editor. You can e-mail him at asaracevic@sfchronicle.com.